Straw into Gold
by Melanippos
Summary: A five part contemporary rewrite of the traditional Rumplestiltskin fairytale accompanying my Tour de Fleece 2010 challenge on Ravelry.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: No need to - this tale is so old it's public property. Mwa ha ha ha ha! Send me all your monies. Or at least more rovings for me to spin.

~Straw to Gold~

First Batt - 2ply - bulky weight

One upon a time there was a farmer that had a single daughter.

His wife had died some time ago, as is often the case in tales such as these, providing him with no other children.

His daughter was hale, strong and an adept hand around the property but the farmer, every evening he attended the pub, was reminded by the conversation of his fellows, that he had no son.

It was not enough that his daughter could throw a cow on her own, shear a sheep almost as fast as her father and could not only bake bread, mend the tractor and belch as loud as the next lad. She was not a boy.  
And the fact was a thorn in his heart.

Now it came to pass that of a friday night, after their third or fourth pints, the local pub talk would turn to the latest occurrences on their farms, each striving to out do their fellows in how useful their sons were at the business.  
Our farmer generally just sat quiet at these times, unable to contribute about a son and unwilling to sit through the uncomfortable silence that followed any mention of his daughter. Though he had some measure of pride in her ability, for all his disappointment she wasn't a son.  
After all when Bill Sprigan's best ewe got stuck in the marsh it was his daughter who got her out, and she'd beaten Tim Mibs at the last post hole-sinking challenge, though no one liked to talk about that one. Least of all Tim.

But hearing about all these young lads, following in their dad's welly-bootsteps increasingly weighed on our farmer and he found himself having to bite his tongue more often.  
And so it was, late one friday, when our farmer had had a few more pints than was wise, (having had to endure the sting of yet another son being born to a friend of his, who already, unfairly, had five strapping sons) that when the talk of sons came around he slammed his tankard down on the table and announced, with pride that not only did his daughter strip and clean a tractor engine that afternoon, she'd mucked out the winter barn on her own, without having to be told mind you. "And your lads alway has to be told to and chased to get it finished." and she had darned his socks and also spun half a bushel of good straw into gold.

Worse the wear for drink our farmer stood up with drunken dignity and stated _"Who'd would want a son anyway coz they couldn't do that on top of a good days work! M' Daughter easily pizzes on all yer sons_" and with that he staggered out of the pub and home.

Most of the farmers took drunken man's boast in a good natured fashion but there were a couple, including Tim Mibs, who had a pair of good-for-nothing sons of his own, who were so insulted by our farmer's words that they decided to organise a come-uppance of the farmer and his brawny daughter.

To be continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: This will only be a short tale, two more chapters tops.

~Straw to Gold~

Second Batt - 2ply, sport weight.

Insulted by the pride of our farmer, Tim Mibs and his cronies decided to draw the attention of the local High King to the farmer's daughter and so punish the boasting farmer's words.

The High King was known to be in financial… embarrassment, and was at the stage of desperation where he was quite happy to try any sort of money making schemes. This was, in part, why he was now as financially unsound as he was. He was rightfully incredulous about the claim that our farmer's lass could spin gold from mere straw. However the High King decided not to throw these informers out on their ear. Theirs was a small community, everyone knew one another moderately well and the farmer's daughter was known for her ability to turn her hand to doing with a knack that bordered on magic, though generally this was relating to mechanics and animal husbandry.

So the king sent his guards for our farmer and demanded that he verify his list of boasts. The accusing agriculturalists had remained and watched avidly for his comeuppance. Still slightly hungover and stung by their malice our farmer drew himself up, his well darned socks warm on his feet, and stated that he had said nothing but the truth. He didn't get the chance to elaborate that is daughter had been making gold from straw (and the wheat attached to it) out on the combine harvester since she was eight, though through the usual form of grain commerce and crop rotation.

The king leapt from his throne, shouting for his guards to fetch the farmers daughter and to fill a room with straw. For a spinning wheel to be sent for and all the paraphernalia that accompanied such a device. When the bewildered farmer asked what was happening the king rounded on him. "Your daughter will come to my castle and spin gold " "But I need her for the farm. She's my best hand." The farmer protested. "Harvest will be coming soon and she practically runs it." "This is for your High King and the wellbeing of your country. I will give her three days - if, in which time she does not spin any straw into gold I will take your farmlands in retribution for your falsehood and you won't need to worry about another harvest."

Our farmer wasn't given a chance to argue. Unceremoniously he was thrown into a carriage fitted with childproof locks and returned to his farm. His daughter was found mending a fence on the edge of the property, and bundled into the carriage, still in her spattered denim's and welly boots.

The farmer's daughter was hastened back the the castle, presented, very briefly, to the king who demanded straw from gold, told her the concequences of failure and, before she could draw breath to get a word in edgeways, she was deposited in the room full of straw without so much as a chance to wash her hands.

Now it was fortunate that the majority of the other farmers were not so petty as those who had spoken to the king. Apart from offering to send sons over to help in the absence of his daughter they passed word around the community about the king's demand, hoping to find some way to help our farmer's daughter with her seemingly impossible task. Nothing travels faster than gossip, especially not such strange news as what had befallen our farmer's daughter. The story reached the ears of the small, hunched man sitting amidst beakers, flasks and glass boxes in his small alchemist's shop that sat, wedged between the tanners and the weavers in the town. The carefully painted sign over the door read:

**R Stilts & Kin**  
Chemist & Commercial Entymologist.

To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I missed a chapter all those years ago.

**Third Batt - 3ply - sport weight**

The farmers daughter, we shall call her Maggie for the sake of this narrative, had been poking morosely at the pile of straw. She had briefly tried beating the straw and carding it but had not, as expected, had any luck. The straw was old and dusty, poking around in it had resulted in excessive dust and so she had stopped and opened all the windows she could reach.

There was a scraping noise from underfoot then a bumping and grinding in one of the walls.  
Warily Maggie picked up a carding brush* and watched the wall. There was a cranking sound and a muffled expletive then a portion of the wall swung inwards and a pair of faces looked in.  
One of them was evidently a servant of the castle by his uniform, the other's outfit shouted 'Scientist!' from chemical stained boots to the white labcoat with iodine spatter on the sleeves.  
The servant glanced around the room and nodded cheerfully at her.

"There you are sir. Good luck'n all. I'll leave it unlocked so as you can collect your gear. Good day Miss." With that the hidden door swung closed leaving her with the other person.

He blinked, adjusted his glasses and surveyed the room. "I've heard you are required to turn straw into gold, and in a incredibly limited time span, and have come to offer my services."

"Who are you?" Maggie asked, lowering the carding brush from where she had, somewhat threateningly, been holding it.

"You may call me 'Scruff' for the interim we are in collaboration. It is the name that all my associates, including my mother, tend to refer to me by." The term certainly suited him as his hair wanted cutting and formed tight curls, which he would later pulled back carelessly with a hairband, and his labcoat and pants were shabby and much mended.

"You can spin straw into gold?" She asked incredulously.

"In a manner of speaking. Yes." Was the reply as 'Scruff' poked dubiously at the spinning wheel then turned his attention to the straw, breaking a piece up and scrutinising the plant matter thoroughly.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I've had a experiment in progress for some time but haven't been able to get funding and workspace to elaborate upon it. This way we both achieve our goals." He straightened, brushing of his hands.

"Tell the king that this straw is substandard," Scruff commanded, gesturing to the pile of straw.  
"Tell him you cannot start with out better materials, further more you will need three rooms worth of straw, doing only one isn't worth the effort and is inefficient." He pushed up his spectacles and surveyed the room.  
"There needs to be extraction fans installed as respiratory health will be an issue and an open vat of tepid water is needed in each room - for humidity don't you know - And we need another… Hmm. Another six of these spinning wheels. When you've told him that then come back and help me with my apparatus."

With that 'Scruff' pulled the wall open and disappeared back from where he had come.

*Board covered in spikes for carding the fleece into the same direction. Get hit by one and you'll know about it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I missed a chapter all those years ago.

Fourth Chapter

Our Maggie was somewhat irritated by his high handedness but she was wise enough not to punch a gift scientist in the mouth. If he managed to get her out of the situation then she would be in his debt.

The instructions were duly repeated the instructions to the king and she returned to the room, expecting to be inundated with straw and spinning wheels in the next hour or so.

It did not turn out that way - The straw seller was an acquaintance of her father, as was the local carpenter and drechler (maker of spokes) who were the primary local source for spinning wheels. There was a sudden lack of straw in the community. Everyone's spinning wheel was broken and in need of repair.  
The obfuscation continued for the better part of a week, in that time our Maggie was fed and boarded at the expense of the castle and spent her days assisting 'Scruff' set up the work space.

In the end the High King ordered in new straw and spinning wheels from inter kingdom, foolishly increasing his debt further.

Over the course of that week our Maggie began to see what the scientist had in mind with the straw. A quick growing fungus was introduced to the old straw once it had been damped down sufficiently, and then insect larvae to the fungus. These in turn pupated into small short lived lacewings. A strata of structures were setup for his collection of spiders and Maggie won Scruff's approval, not only for her lack of squeamishness on part of the insects, but also her improvements on his own somewhat rickety insect harvesting-sieves.

By the time the good straw had arrived the spiders were settled, the kinks in the lacewing air-wafting scoop apparatus had been ironed out and the spiders were well fed, though the poorer straw didn't provide the same rich yield of insects that Scruff assured Maggie the new straw would.

The spinneret compiler was whirring away softly when the first of the farmers began bundling in the bales of straw. They all called cheery greetings to Maggie though they ignored Scruff as if he wasn't' there. In fact whenever she glanced up and people were entering the room he seemed to shrink from sight, duck behind a frame or off into a far corner of the room behind yet another pile of fungi covered straw.  
At the end of the first day the fungi, sprayed with some catalyst of Scruffs invention, burgeoned - forming great saffron caps that the larvae glutted on, writhing over the surface in a gastronomic frenzy.

By the second day the air was so thick with flying insects that goggles and bandanas over the face had to be worn. The air compressor blew the insects in great swirling clouds to the spiders feeding stations and silk production rocketed.

"Why don't the lace wings get caught in the web strands?" Maggie asked  
"A chemical in the fungi ingested through the lace wings retards that enzyme in web production," was Scruff's reply. She shrugged, nodded and got on with oiling the seven spinning wheels that had been tensioned and cross cabled with the air compressors engine - spinning with a faint silverly humming noise.

By the middle of the third day both the straw and the fungi was gone and the last of the lace wings had pupated. The spiders were beginning to flag and one of the spinning wheels had, briefly, burst into flame. (Fortunately Maggie had the presence of mind to keep a fire extinguisher on hand and no silk was burnt).

An hour before the kings summons at the end of the third day of spinning Maggie looked around the third empty room and heaved a sigh of relief.  
The great golden skeins of silk lay resting on the table but, other than the empty moisture vats, the rooms were empty and swept clean. All the apparatus had been dismantled and, along with the exhausted spiders reboxed and removed. Scruff was smugly holding his folder of written results, eager to go to write up his findings.

Maggie startled the slight man by giving him a fierce hug, picking him up off his feet and whirling him around.

"Thankyou so much for your help What can I give you in return?" She asked,  
"Nothing I haven't the ability to access for myself" was the evasive reply.  
"Anything! If it's in my power to grant it. You deserve it for all this help - my dad's farm is saved because of this."

"Then give me your first born child" Was his flippant reply.

"I don't have one of those." Maggie half laughed, uncertain of his meaning. He shrugged and waved a hand evasively.

"Not yet. But you might one day. Let me know your answer… that is if you care to look me up." And with that he departed through the hidden door, locking it behind him.

Now Maggie wasn't entirely sure how to take that - in some lights it sounded like a relationship proposal by someone who didn't have a clue how to go about it. She didn't have time to think more of it though.

The king arrived and was at first distressed by the lack of metal-gold and then, at his courtiers recognition of the value of the fibre, he was delighted and demanded Maggie's hand in marriage and the exclusive rights to her straw-to-gold technique. (He had been kept completely oblivious to the Science that had taken place and the presence of Scruff, though the rest of the castle staff had known and provided a daily afternoon tea)

"Oh! I cant marry you. I am already engaged!" Maggie flubbed. "Um. He was just here a moment ago… I'll introduce you to my… uh my fiance as soon as I can."

"And this man's name is?"

Maggie started coffing, feigning dust from the straw. She hadn't a clue what his real name was.

"If you cannot produce this fiance in three days time I will invoke High King's rights and marry you."


	5. Chapter 5

un-Disclaimer: I have nothing to declare but the sun's brilliance. And that I am done with this distraction! Or at least I will be once I've tweaked and ammended grammar, changed bits around and so forth.

~Straw to Gold~

**Marigold dye - 3 skeins, mixed weight.**

Maggie, irritated but not willing to deck the high king (despite being fully capable of it, and, from the nervous glances of the guards behind the king, evidently looking like it too), demanded that she be able to go home and that she would contact her 'fiance' from there.

The mess that met her, both in the machine yard and the house itself threw her into a further fury, one of cleaning and mending. Her father, having heard angry story beat a retreat to the pub while she alternated with broom and spanner setting the farm to rights again. Word passed around the farmers and from them to the other inhabitants of the city who marvelled at the farmer's daughter who apparently truly spun gold from straw, and before the king no less, and that she was searching for the young man who had helped.

'How Romantic!' the fishwife sighed to the baker's wife.

"Like a Fairy tale," the iron monger's mother confided to the miller's eldest daughter. "If I were but twenty years younger"  
"Thirty more like it," was the waggish reply.

"Not going to do her much good - he's packing to head out on some expedition to Nigeria last thing I heard." The youngest son of the butcher wryly remarked to the potter's niece. "Poor Maggie then." She remarked

"Poor my foot!" spat a beggar, who had none, sitting on the cathedral steps. "She'll be up at the castle, fed from a silver spoon."

"But what about the one she loves? How dreadful to be married when you love someone else. Tragic love!" Mused the book seller's sister as she gossiped out the window with the grocer.

"And worked like a plough horse by the king I imagine. Spinning all hours to make enough gold for him to fritter away," sniffed the man as he arranged the celery display to his liking.

"Does anyone actually know where this lad is right now?" The blacksmith asked, putting down his hammer. "Its a dreadful thing if he's shirking responsibility."

~o0o~

And so it was, three days later, the proprietor of R. Stilts & Kin was found and hustled out of his study where he had been writing a paper to the arachnological society. He was poked, prodded, shoved, nudged and finally picked up and carried through the city by various concerned citizens, all hell bent on delivering him to his sundered love. This despite his protests that he did not know who they were talking about, that he was not running off to Nigeria (that exhibition was last month) and would they kindly take their hands off his person.

Finally he found himself deposited before the king and his court. Maggie was there, as was the impressive skeins of gold silk that seemed to glow in the meager court light and the unimpressed king, marriage and patent contract sitting awaiting Maggie's signature beside him.

"Well. Who are you" The king demanded

"Rumpole Stilts, PhD. MSc, . You can spell it Rumple too. Most people get confused."

Maggie rounded on him. "PhD? You're a doctor?"

Scruff, Rumpole, shrugged. "Twice. In Chemistry and Entymology. What's all this about."

"You're my fiance, so the King can't marry me."

"What?"

"You offered marriage didn't you"

"How do you extrapolate that?"

"My 'first born child'."

"I jokingly inferred training the child as a lab assistant. Really. I barely know you." Rumpole pushed his glasses up and scrutinised her through the smudged lenses.

"I'm hardly going to propose to someone I've known for less than a week. Hormonal inclinations are not a sound basis for a relationship expected to extend the span of an individuals life."

Rumpole then turned on the king. "In this day and age attempting to marry solely to gain the spouse's property shows a dreadful lack of judgement on the part of you, especially with your reign only being in state because the people have no reason to overthrow you. I don't like your chances if you continue to attempt to impose such a regime on your subjects. Besides only the raw material belonged to you initially. The labour and process is entirely mine and this young lady's. However if you are wiling to invest capital in this silk making scheme I am willing to give you my half of the silk. As you can see the dividends of such a business are likely to be very profitable."

So the foolish king, directed by his advisors, renounced his claim on Maggie, accepted the silk and resold it for more than enough to satisfy his debts AND buy shares in the fledgeling silk business that Rumpole and Maggie established.  
The agreement between the alchemist and the farmer's daughter was established on an entirely business partner level.

Maggie continued to run the farm after her father retired, leasing out a large shed to Rumpole and supplying him with the better cuts of straw whilst selling on the wheat. On off season when there wasn't spare straw to process they would go off on entomological expeditions as far afield as the amazon and tibet , bringing back a variety of web building spider species and diversifying the silk varieties offered by the company in which they both held shares.

Many many years later Rumpole and Maggie decided that they did actually love each other and had several children, all of whom exhibited scientific inclinations and a sound sense of common sense.

The End


End file.
